Transition Planning for Students with IEPs _
Stanberry, K. (2010). Transition Planning for Students With IEPs. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/transition-planning-for-students-with-ieps/ _
Transition services are programs and assistance provided to students with special needs who have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), designed to help them "transition" into adult life and focused on post-secondary education, career and vocational preparation, and independent living. They are meant to be designed in cooperation with students and parents to help students achieve postsecondary goals. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students are required to have transition plans that align with their goals incorporated into their IEPs when they turn sixteen, that transition services be discussed at an annual IEP meeting, and that parents be informed of their children's progress toward their goals. Transition planning can improve the special education drop-out rate: over thirty percent of students with disabilities drop out of high school, and only thirteen percent of students with disabilities attend four-year college within two years after high school. Counseling and academic support, educational and vocational courses, planning, and training, career services and work experience education, and connections to specific programs and services are among the transition services available to high school students. The article is an informative outline for parents of children with disabilities of what transition services are, why they are important, what services are available, and how transition services should be selected. It also cites challenges facing students with disabilities, like the high school drop-out rate. I was shocked to see that over thirty percent of students with disabilities do not even graduate high school, let alone pursue postsecondary education. It sounds like ideally there are many transition services available to students, but if the dropout rate is so high, clearly transition services are not being carried out in ideal ways. The question is why transition services are not as effective as they are designed to be, and that question is addressed in the following study.
Disproportionality in Transition Services: A Descriptive Study _ Baer, R. M., Daviso, A., Queen, R. M., & Flexer, R. W.. (2011). Disproportionality in Transition Services: A Descriptive Study. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 46(2), 172–185. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23879689 _ The study focuses on issues with transition services for students. Education for students with special needs should be centered around their postsecondary goals, whether the students want to pursue full-time employment or college after high school. Students should not be screened and "tracked" into certain programs based on what careers teachers or administrators think they can pursue with their disabilities. However, transition services and individualized learning plans often do not align with students' goals. Gender, race, type of disability, and school setting affect how transition services are provided to students. More females with disabilities have postsecondary education goals than males, who are more focused on full-time employment after high school, and yet females have lower academic achievement than males. A serious disconnect also exists between post school goals and school curricula for African Americans. African American students are overrepresented in special education programs and underrepresented in advanced placement programs, and are more likely to be separated and put in "restrictive environments" than their white peers. Though significantly more African Americans with disabilities report college goals than white students with disabilities, they take less career and vocational readiness classes, and fewer pass qualifying tests. Type of disability also affects how special needs students are taught: students with mental retardation, traumatic brain injuries, and multiple disabilities were more than twice as likely to be placed in classes below grade level than hearing-impared students. Students with disabilities are often unable to enroll in advanced classes without losing access to services designed to meet their needs. Transition services related to postsecondary education preparation are lacking for disabled students, especially those with emotional and intellectual disabilities as opposed to learning disabilities like dyslexia and attention issues, possibly because there are more students with learning disabilities than other disabilities. School setting also plays a factor: rural students spend more time in mainstream classrooms than suburban students and urban students, and more rural students want to enter full-time employment instead of college after graduation. Urban schools have the worst coordination of student postsecondary goals with school curricula, despite the fact that IDEA is designed to align student goals with curricula. Schools are resistant to the "mandates" of IDEA, and so have not integrated IDEA into their education systems.
It is alarming to see that females with disabilities tend to have lower academic achievement than males, which is especially unfortunate given that females are more likely to want to attend college. I was especially shocked to see that more African Americans are likely to be put in special education programs they may not need and are more likely to be separated from peers than white students with disabilities. It seems like girls, African Americans, and students with more uncommon disabilities are underrepresented groups in transition planning and that the planning focuses on full-time career placement after high school and is geared toward students with less "difficult" disabilities like reading or attention issues as opposed to those with more serious emotional or mental issues. It appears that though the special education system is supposed to be individualized to each student, schools try to standardize it and come up with one formula to fit all students. Teachers and administrators should better communicate with students and parents to determine what each student's postsecondary goals are and form curricula based on those goals.
R.I., City of Providence settle case involving sheltered-workshop violations _
Arditi, L., & Zinner, K. (2013, June 13). R.I., City of Providence settle case involving sheltered-workshop violations. The Providence Journal. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20130613/NEWS/306139910 _
In June of 2013, Rhode Island and the city of Providence settled a case to resolve violations of the Americans Disabilities Act that illustrates the need for transition services and the ability of schools to provide "services" to special needs students that are sub-par and even damaging. Over 200 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities were participants in a "sheltered workshop" through Training Thru Placement, a North Providence organization that offered workshops to former students of Harold A. Birch Vocational School and other Providence schools. The individuals were working stuffing peppers and packaging Romano cheese for an average of $1.57 per hour, and some were not paid at all and worked pointlessly sorting buttons that were dumped out each day only to be sorted again. A federal investigation into the organization revealed that for twenty-five years, transition services at the Birch school had been directed towards providing Training Thru Placement, which had contracts with local companies, with cheap labor. The Justice Department cites this as an extreme example of the state of Rhode Island and the city of Providence and other communities and school districts setting up special education programs that leave individuals with no option but to work in low-paying jobs separate from non-disabled students. The individuals are now provided integrated jobs working twenty hours a week, are paid competitive wages, and received back pay, and students at the Birch school will be provided with helpful transition services. Rhode Island plans to phase out all segregated day programs like these by 2017.
This is a perfect, though scary, example of schools "tracking" students into specific programs with little regard for the students' individual goals. The ability of a school and a company to exploit disabled individuals for twenty-five years shows the need to establish transition services to place students into the postsecondary education programs or jobs they want and the need to educate students with disabilities about the options available to them. State education departments should pay closer attention to their school districts to ensure disabled students are able to take advantage of all transition services they should have access to, and school districts should ensure their staff is committed to matching students with the services that best help students meet their goals. Parents should also make an effort to read laws and helpful websites like the previous source so they can be informed about all the options their child has and discuss those with the child to help them form a plan. Parents would then be able to take that plan to the school and go into IEP meeting knowing what services the school should provide their children. The article highlights the ability of schools to ignore the needs and take advantage of students with intellectual disabilities and the need for students and parents to be aware of students' rights.
Editorial: Writing Off Disabled Children _
Writing off Disabled Children. [Editorial]. (2008, August 9). The New York Times, p. A18. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat3.html?_r=0 _
The author argues the Texas school system and school districts in general ignore students with special needs while they are in school then the legal system often criminalizes them because of behaviors that were not properly dealt with in high school. The author implies the transition services special needs students are entitled to in school would help them to control their behavior during and after high school and would lead to a lower percentage of special education students in juvenile jails. Instead, special needs students with behavior problems are expelled or suspended and "fall behind." According to the author, who cited a report delivered to the Texas Youth Commission, over forty percent of juveniles in custody in Texas have disabilities, and the number may be even higher, as "children's advocates" believe many individuals with disabilities have not been diagnosed. The report states that the the "poorly trained" Texas educational staff do not teach in accordance with accepted "best practices." Often, special needs children are left to learn on their own, especially when it comes to reading, which which many special needs children struggle. The report calls for the State Legislature to require districts to provide special needs students with the services they are entitled to, hire teachers with more special education training, and instate stronger observation of special education programs. I did not know that the Texas juvenile detention system had such a high percentage of special needs students in jail. It makes sense that students with learning, intellectual, and behavioral issues who are not provided with helpful transition services would continue patterns of socially unacceptable behavior after high school which could potentially lead to committing crimes. Becoming frustrated by not understanding classroom material could drive students to anger that could lead to violence. Even though the report deals with Texas and not Rhode Island, it emphasizes the need for vital transition services in high school that will prepare special needs students to have healthy and happy lives after graduation. The editorial supports the theory that although many transition services supposed to be available to students, the students are nor actually given access to those services or the staff is so poorly trained that they do not understand how to help the students. I think the author's idea that stronger oversight of the special education programs and classes would improve the success of the programs and the happiness of the students because teachers and administrators would have to explain themselves and their programs to people carefully evaluating them.
CQ Research Report: Special Education _
Koch, K. (2000, November 10). Special Education. The CQ Researcher, 10(39), 916-919. Retrieved from http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/getpdf.php?id=cqresrre2000111000 _
This report provides a history of special education reform and an overview of current issues. This summary focuses on only the parts of the report dealing with transition services. The report states that under IDEA, students with learning disabilities are entitled to laptops, tape recorders, tailored homework assignments, extra time on standard achievement and college entrance exams, and oral exams if necessary, and it is clear from the above articles that even more services are available. The article addressing funding for transition services as well, stating that as early as 1995 schools were spending three billion dollars a year on extra services for ADHD students alone. The 1991 decision to include ADHD as a disability covered by IDEA was met with backlash from politicians and schools who foresaw extra costs that would occur when accommodating a disability with so wide a spectrum as ADHD. Parents pressed for the policy change, seeing either the need for their child to receive extra help or the opportunity for their child to obtain extra services. Some educators say the change in policy led to a spike in the amount of Ritalin prescriptions for children because children diagnosed with ADHD and taking the medication would gain access to these special services. A less controversial addition to IDEA occurred in 1997, when the law required schools to provide explanations when special needs students were not being included in regular class lessons and activities and also mandated that schools evaluate whether disabilities were due to special needs or a weak grasp of the English language in non-English-speaking students. Education officials and politicians are proud of the progress made in special education reform and say the system is "moving in the right direction."
While it is undeniable that special education in the United States has improved greatly since the early twentieth century when students with special needs either did not attend school or were sent to completely segregated schools executing menial, non-stimulating tasks, there is clearly still room for improvement. The addition of ADHD to the law provided an opportunity for parents to unnecessarily medicate their children and take advantage of transition services but in doing so created a stigma that MANY parents and children take advantage of this loophole. It also likely explains minorities are overrepresented in the special needs population, as teachers can easily recommend to parents that children with "behavioral issues" should be labeled and medicated, and any existing racial prejudice or stigma a teacher has would increase the likelihood of them labeling minority students in this way.
Overall Reaction to Your Research
There are many services students are legally entitled to under IDEA. However, the high special needs high school drop out rate, the ability of companies to exploit special needs students after high school, the special needs gender achievement gap, overrepresentation of minorities, high possibility of special needs students to wind up in juvenile jails, and disregard for student goals in IEPs suggest that either schools are not providing transition services or are not executing them in ways that benefit students. Based on my research, I feel it is likely schools take advantage of the fact that parents of special needs students leave it up to and expect schools to figure out how to best educate their child. As a result, schools have the freedom to tell the parents how their child's education will be carried out, and likely choose standard simple and cheap options they use for a many children, regardless of the wide range of disabilities. If students and parents are not aware of their rights and options, it is easy for schools to take advantage of them and avoid providing services that meet students' needs. At the same time, schools have a legal obligation to provide a wide range of services based on student goals and so should be paying close attention to student and parent wishes when formulating IEPs. Clearly, there is a disconnect between what transition services are best for students and what help students actually receive.
How does this research help us identify or refine a strategy to improve schools in Rhode Island?
In order to insure special needs students are receiving all services they are entitled to and that their postsecondary goals are taken into account, stricter observations and evaluations of special education programs are needed. In addition, more extensive teacher, administrator, and counselor training is needed to help educators and administrators understand not only the rights of special needs students but the wide range of disabilities of students, students' individual personal goals, and what transition services can be implemented to best help each student achieve these goals.
Transition Planning for Students with IEPs
_
Stanberry, K. (2010). Transition Planning for Students With IEPs. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/transition-planning-for-students-with-ieps/
_
Transition services are programs and assistance provided to students with special needs who have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), designed to help them "transition" into adult life and focused on post-secondary education, career and vocational preparation, and independent living. They are meant to be designed in cooperation with students and parents to help students achieve postsecondary goals. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students are required to have transition plans that align with their goals incorporated into their IEPs when they turn sixteen, that transition services be discussed at an annual IEP meeting, and that parents be informed of their children's progress toward their goals. Transition planning can improve the special education drop-out rate: over thirty percent of students with disabilities drop out of high school, and only thirteen percent of students with disabilities attend four-year college within two years after high school. Counseling and academic support, educational and vocational courses, planning, and training, career services and work experience education, and connections to specific programs and services are among the transition services available to high school students.
The article is an informative outline for parents of children with disabilities of what transition services are, why they are important, what services are available, and how transition services should be selected. It also cites challenges facing students with disabilities, like the high school drop-out rate. I was shocked to see that over thirty percent of students with disabilities do not even graduate high school, let alone pursue postsecondary education. It sounds like ideally there are many transition services available to students, but if the dropout rate is so high, clearly transition services are not being carried out in ideal ways. The question is why transition services are not as effective as they are designed to be, and that question is addressed in the following study.
Disproportionality in Transition Services: A Descriptive Study
_
Baer, R. M., Daviso, A., Queen, R. M., & Flexer, R. W.. (2011). Disproportionality in Transition Services: A Descriptive Study. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 46(2), 172–185. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23879689
_
The study focuses on issues with transition services for students. Education for students with special needs should be centered around their postsecondary goals, whether the students want to pursue full-time employment or college after high school. Students should not be screened and "tracked" into certain programs based on what careers teachers or administrators think they can pursue with their disabilities. However, transition services and individualized learning plans often do not align with students' goals. Gender, race, type of disability, and school setting affect how transition services are provided to students. More females with disabilities have postsecondary education goals than males, who are more focused on full-time employment after high school, and yet females have lower academic achievement than males. A serious disconnect also exists between post school goals and school curricula for African Americans.
African American students are overrepresented in special education programs and underrepresented in advanced placement programs, and are more likely to be separated and put in "restrictive environments" than their white peers. Though significantly more African Americans with disabilities report college goals than white students with disabilities, they take less career and vocational readiness classes, and fewer pass qualifying tests. Type of disability also affects how special needs students are taught: students with mental retardation, traumatic brain injuries, and multiple disabilities were more than twice as likely to be placed in classes below grade level than hearing-impared students. Students with disabilities are often unable to enroll in advanced classes without losing access to services designed to meet their needs. Transition services related to postsecondary education preparation are lacking for disabled students, especially those with emotional and intellectual disabilities as opposed to learning disabilities like dyslexia and attention issues, possibly because there are more students with learning disabilities than other disabilities. School setting also plays a factor: rural students spend more time in mainstream classrooms than suburban students and urban students, and more rural students want to enter full-time employment instead of college after graduation. Urban schools have the worst coordination of student postsecondary goals with school curricula, despite the fact that IDEA is designed to align student goals with curricula. Schools are resistant to the "mandates" of IDEA, and so have not integrated IDEA into their education systems.
It is alarming to see that females with disabilities tend to have lower academic achievement than males, which is especially unfortunate given that females are more likely to want to attend college. I was especially shocked to see that more African Americans are likely to be put in special education programs they may not need and are more likely to be separated from peers than white students with disabilities. It seems like girls, African Americans, and students with more uncommon disabilities are underrepresented groups in transition planning and that the planning focuses on full-time career placement after high school and is geared toward students with less "difficult" disabilities like reading or attention issues as opposed to those with more serious emotional or mental issues. It appears that though the special education system is supposed to be individualized to each student, schools try to standardize it and come up with one formula to fit all students. Teachers and administrators should better communicate with students and parents to determine what each student's postsecondary goals are and form curricula based on those goals.
R.I., City of Providence settle case involving sheltered-workshop violations
_
Arditi, L., & Zinner, K. (2013, June 13). R.I., City of Providence settle case involving sheltered-workshop violations. The Providence Journal. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from http://www.providencejournal.com/article/20130613/NEWS/306139910
_
In June of 2013, Rhode Island and the city of Providence settled a case to resolve violations of the Americans Disabilities Act that illustrates the need for transition services and the ability of schools to provide "services" to special needs students that are sub-par and even damaging. Over 200 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities were participants in a "sheltered workshop" through Training Thru Placement, a North Providence organization that offered workshops to former students of Harold A. Birch Vocational School and other Providence schools. The individuals were working stuffing peppers and packaging Romano cheese for an average of $1.57 per hour, and some were not paid at all and worked pointlessly sorting buttons that were dumped out each day only to be sorted again. A federal investigation into the organization revealed that for twenty-five years, transition services at the Birch school had been directed towards providing Training Thru Placement, which had contracts with local companies, with cheap labor. The Justice Department cites this as an extreme example of the state of Rhode Island and the city of Providence and other communities and school districts setting up special education programs that leave individuals with no option but to work in low-paying jobs separate from non-disabled students. The individuals are now provided integrated jobs working twenty hours a week, are paid competitive wages, and received back pay, and students at the Birch school will be provided with helpful transition services. Rhode Island plans to phase out all segregated day programs like these by 2017.
This is a perfect, though scary, example of schools "tracking" students into specific programs with little regard for the students' individual goals. The ability of a school and a company to exploit disabled individuals for twenty-five years shows the need to establish transition services to place students into the postsecondary education programs or jobs they want and the need to educate students with disabilities about the options available to them. State education departments should pay closer attention to their school districts to ensure disabled students are able to take advantage of all transition services they should have access to, and school districts should ensure their staff is committed to matching students with the services that best help students meet their goals. Parents should also make an effort to read laws and helpful websites like the previous source so they can be informed about all the options their child has and discuss those with the child to help them form a plan. Parents would then be able to take that plan to the school and go into IEP meeting knowing what services the school should provide their children. The article highlights the ability of schools to ignore the needs and take advantage of students with intellectual disabilities and the need for students and parents to be aware of students' rights.
Editorial: Writing Off Disabled Children
_
Writing off Disabled Children. [Editorial]. (2008, August 9). The New York Times, p. A18. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/opinion/09sat3.html?_r=0
_
The author argues the Texas school system and school districts in general ignore students with special needs while they are in school then the legal system often criminalizes them because of behaviors that were not properly dealt with in high school. The author implies the transition services special needs students are entitled to in school would help them to control their behavior during and after high school and would lead to a lower percentage of special education students in juvenile jails. Instead, special needs students with behavior problems are expelled or suspended and "fall behind." According to the author, who cited a report delivered to the Texas Youth Commission, over forty percent of juveniles in custody in Texas have disabilities, and the number may be even higher, as "children's advocates" believe many individuals with disabilities have not been diagnosed. The report states that the the "poorly trained" Texas educational staff do not teach in accordance with accepted "best practices." Often, special needs children are left to learn on their own, especially when it comes to reading, which which many special needs children struggle. The report calls for the State Legislature to require districts to provide special needs students with the services they are entitled to, hire teachers with more special education training, and instate stronger observation of special education programs.
I did not know that the Texas juvenile detention system had such a high percentage of special needs students in jail. It makes sense that students with learning, intellectual, and behavioral issues who are not provided with helpful transition services would continue patterns of socially unacceptable behavior after high school which could potentially lead to committing crimes. Becoming frustrated by not understanding classroom material could drive students to anger that could lead to violence. Even though the report deals with Texas and not Rhode Island, it emphasizes the need for vital transition services in high school that will prepare special needs students to have healthy and happy lives after graduation. The editorial supports the theory that although many transition services supposed to be available to students, the students are nor actually given access to those services or the staff is so poorly trained that they do not understand how to help the students. I think the author's idea that stronger oversight of the special education programs and classes would improve the success of the programs and the happiness of the students because teachers and administrators would have to explain themselves and their programs to people carefully evaluating them.
CQ Research Report: Special Education
_
Koch, K. (2000, November 10). Special Education. The CQ Researcher, 10(39), 916-919. Retrieved from
http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/getpdf.php?id=cqresrre2000111000
_
This report provides a history of special education reform and an overview of current issues. This summary focuses on only the parts of the report dealing with transition services. The report states that under IDEA, students with learning disabilities are entitled to laptops, tape recorders, tailored homework assignments, extra time on standard achievement and college entrance exams, and oral exams if necessary, and it is clear from the above articles that even more services are available. The article addressing funding for transition services as well, stating that as early as 1995 schools were spending three billion dollars a year on extra services for ADHD students alone. The 1991 decision to include ADHD as a disability covered by IDEA was met with backlash from politicians and schools who foresaw extra costs that would occur when accommodating a disability with so wide a spectrum as ADHD. Parents pressed for the policy change, seeing either the need for their child to receive extra help or the opportunity for their child to obtain extra services. Some educators say the change in policy led to a spike in the amount of Ritalin prescriptions for children because children diagnosed with ADHD and taking the medication would gain access to these special services. A less controversial addition to IDEA occurred in 1997, when the law required schools to provide explanations when special needs students were not being included in regular class lessons and activities and also mandated that schools evaluate whether disabilities were due to special needs or a weak grasp of the English language in non-English-speaking students. Education officials and politicians are proud of the progress made in special education reform and say the system is "moving in the right direction."
While it is undeniable that special education in the United States has improved greatly since the early twentieth century when students with special needs either did not attend school or were sent to completely segregated schools executing menial, non-stimulating tasks, there is clearly still room for improvement. The addition of ADHD to the law provided an opportunity for parents to unnecessarily medicate their children and take advantage of transition services but in doing so created a stigma that MANY parents and children take advantage of this loophole. It also likely explains minorities are overrepresented in the special needs population, as teachers can easily recommend to parents that children with "behavioral issues" should be labeled and medicated, and any existing racial prejudice or stigma a teacher has would increase the likelihood of them labeling minority students in this way.
Overall Reaction to Your Research
There are many services students are legally entitled to under IDEA. However, the high special needs high school drop out rate, the ability of companies to exploit special needs students after high school, the special needs gender achievement gap, overrepresentation of minorities, high possibility of special needs students to wind up in juvenile jails, and disregard for student goals in IEPs suggest that either schools are not providing transition services or are not executing them in ways that benefit students. Based on my research, I feel it is likely schools take advantage of the fact that parents of special needs students leave it up to and expect schools to figure out how to best educate their child. As a result, schools have the freedom to tell the parents how their child's education will be carried out, and likely choose standard simple and cheap options they use for a many children, regardless of the wide range of disabilities. If students and parents are not aware of their rights and options, it is easy for schools to take advantage of them and avoid providing services that meet students' needs. At the same time, schools have a legal obligation to provide a wide range of services based on student goals and so should be paying close attention to student and parent wishes when formulating IEPs. Clearly, there is a disconnect between what transition services are best for students and what help students actually receive.How does this research help us identify or refine a strategy to improve schools in Rhode Island?
In order to insure special needs students are receiving all services they are entitled to and that their postsecondary goals are taken into account, stricter observations and evaluations of special education programs are needed. In addition, more extensive teacher, administrator, and counselor training is needed to help educators and administrators understand not only the rights of special needs students but the wide range of disabilities of students, students' individual personal goals, and what transition services can be implemented to best help each student achieve these goals.